Ana into round three

Ana secured a place in the third round of The Championships at Wimbledon after beating world No.66 Jie Zheng from China 6-4, 6-0 in impressive fashion. The 26-year-old produced a brilliant performance that included twenty winners and just nine unforced errors during the 61 minute match.

However, as it may have been predicted prior to the match, Zheng started brightly on court No.3: the Chinese held sweet memories from beating Ana at this event six years ago and she clearly entered today’s contest with confidence.

After Ana had held serve to love in the opening game of the match, the world No.66 stepped into the court as took the ball very early to take time away from Ana. The flat groundstrokes from the Chinese proved formidable and she aggressively attacked the former world No.1’s serve; the 26-year-old had no direct answer and Zheng scored the first break in the third game.

But Ana was in no mood for a repeat of their 2008 clash. The 11th seed immediately upped her game and she recovered the arrears on the first possible occasion, smashing the break point away at the net after she had patiently built up the point. She followed it up with a perfect service game to love and forced a 4-2 gap with a stunning forehand return winner to break the Chinese for a second time.

However, more breaks of serve were to follow: Ana was unable to consolidate her advantage as she was broken to 15 shortly after. Breaks came and went for the remainder of the set, until Ana eventually clinched it after a double fault from Zheng in the 10th game.

After those five consecutive breaks of serve, Ana wiped away a 0-30 deficit in the opening game of set two to establish a 1-0 lead. From this moment, further resistance appeared broken on the other side of the net.

Ana was now in imperious form and with Zheng being unable to hold serve in set two – she managed to hold just once during the match – the 11th seed raced into a 4-0 lead as she ruthlessly barraged Zheng’s second delivery.

Ana added a love game to get a comfortable 5-0 lead and she broke the Chinese serve for a seventh time to complete the second set whitewash as she firmly underlined her recent fine form on grass. She is currently on a seven match winning streak on the green surface.

Ana will play world last year’s runner-up Sabine Lisicki in round three on Saturday.